Parting Glances
by varletun
Summary: Based on The Chronicles of Narnia. It's time for us to move on.


**Disclaimer**: C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia". If only I could be half as amazing.

**Rating**: G

**Notes**: This started out as a sequel to "Enough", but, um, isn't, because I'm really bad at actually sticking to what I intend to write, haha, and um, yes. Anyway, I'm – going to stop here, yes. Please review and criticize me mercilessly and make my heart break! I like this a lot, thank you! (And also I think I am masochistic.) :)

* * *

The dust has settled. 

Thin film covers his table, his shelves, his goose-down pillow, his books, his bed. Sunlight is tainted; the particles swirl anxiously, little grey specks spinning about in harsh sheens of light that bear down angrily into the room. Drawing pads and sketch pads lay haphazardly all over the room, pages flipped open to bursts of brilliant colour and stanzas of poetry scribbled down in frenzied inspiration. His walls are covered in posters, paintings, verses. His room was always the most comfortable, the most warm.

_He was always the most wonderful._

I touch the edge of the table, fingertips barely brushing the dust-covered grain of wood, and pull my new yellow skirt to myself to keep it from getting dirty. It's been ages since I've come in here.

A million feelings, a million snatches of sound and touch and taste and a million different things I feel should be said before— before I leave this home.

A million little catches in my throat, and I cough slightly.

It's dusty, you see.

It's untouched, this room, since he – and the others – went away. It's been a month, a year, a decade or a century or so, now, but I have long since lost count.

I sit nervously on the bed, the soft mattress sinking a little with my weight, and the sun is warm against my back, and somehow this seems oddly very comfortable. My eyes scan the room in all its homey messiness, with pencils rolled down from table to floor and socks left absently under the table and I can almost see Peter rushing in again to grab his coat and knocking that case of crayons to the floor and saying he is late and will miss the train and will clean that up later, Su, don't fret over it, now let's go—

_But oh, here's Peter, lying stretched out over his bed, sketch-pad and charcoal pencils in hand and smiling wearily over at me as I grin, leaning against his leg, dying to tell him about that girl or that boy at school because oh, Peter always listens and laughs or nods and doesn't nag at me like Mother or Edmund or Lucy -_

I shut my eyes, shaking myself, tearing myself away from my thoughts, _because you know he's gone, he's gone _and when I open them again I see his eyes that are meeting mine, fondness for his little sister melting like sweet chocolate into my very being, and when I open my eyes I can hear Edmund's rusty old motorcycle revving up downstairs, and Lucy's piano-playing drifting in like silk and Mother's call for supper beneath it all –

And I open my eyes and I see those pictures, those lovely, lovely pictures of his in my hands that he gives me every year for my birthday, framed and oh, so amazingly beautiful of animals and of lovely ladies in gorgeous dresses and of people dancing around fires in the forest and of dashing, dangerous men in armour brandishing their fine weapons and I feel that slight kiss of his on my forehead that I have always found almost _regal_ -

I open my eyes and I hear him, his voice that comes back to me in whispers

"_Su, do you ever think about Aslan? At all?"_

"_Peter, whatever do you – Oh, not you too, Peter! Edmund and Lucy have _just_ stopped badgering me about playing Let's Pretend again. Honestly, I don't know why they both keep going _on_about it so –"_

"_I don't – Su, just, please? Do you?"_

and for a moment I wonder why this conversation out of them all is dancing about in my ears

_"Oh for goodness sakes', Peter – Well, all right, yes, I suppose I do, whenever you lot mention our childhood days. He was… rather an extravagantcharacter we dreamed up, wasn't he? And we rather liked him a lot, didn't we?"_

and for a moment I wonder why when I close my eyes

_"Yes, we did, Su. We did. Thanks, that's— that's all I wanted to ask, really."_

I can see your eyes in the darkness and I wonder why it looks as if you are crying.

The ground is hard and the dust shakes up in little puffs when I fall heavily to the floor. My fingernails scratch the surface roughly and I wince as I see the bright red paint on them chipping off at the edges.

I stand. I draw the curtains, and cross the room to the doorway. The sun has since faded behind the clouds, and the dusty little room is bathed in familiar shadows. Already it is getting dark.

_Enough, enough of this._

I will leave for America tonight. I've always loved the idea of America, with all its glamour and excitement and oh, that's what Father would have wanted, and Peter, too, for me to go out and see the world while I am still at the prime of my life. Even Dr. Thomas encouraged me, and she's a therapist and she knows about these things.

The door shuts with a slight click behind me as I walk away, my footsteps light in my renewed vigour and in this moment I feel I can take on the world.

* * *

"Mr. Holkes! 'Ave ya heard the news?"

"Wotcher talkin about, then, Tommy?"

"Miss Pevensie left 'er house! She ain't never done that afore! And them neighbours said she's goin' to America!"

"Bollocks! The woman's to her sixties! She s'not gonna leave that old house of hers at this age!"

"Don't know about that, sir! You know they're sayin' she's always bin a bit batty…"

"They're right, aye – Whole family died quite half a cintury ago, horrible thing that – Drove her to the brink! S'pity, really. She used to be a beauty, ya know, Tommy – every boy in town wanted a piece of that purty girl Susan…"

* * *


End file.
